It's obvious where Joe in Coronation Street (ITV1) got the inspiration for his own faked death. He admits it. "There is another way," he says to Gail when she tells him she plans to win the lottery to solve their financial woes. "Disappear. Like that canoe guy."

He's been hinting at it for a while, talking of clean slates. They – Joe, Gail and Joe's little sailing boat – are in the Lake District, for a romantic break, Gail thinks, but really because the loan shark's been circling (cue Jaws music: dur durm).

Joe's got it all worked out, he says, and learned from the canoe man's mistakes. He'll disappear on the lake at night, presumed drowned, then lie low in Ireland (Ireland is the new Panama). The loan shark will swim away; Gail can visit, and in a few years the life insurance will pay out, all problems solved.

Gail's not keen, not keen at all. They have a fight on the lakeside. Joe hurts his wrist, but manages to get away in the boat, leaving Gail on the jetty, wailing at the full moon like a werewolf. Aaaarrrooo. It's not just the canoe man who's being nodded at, there's something of Donald Crowhurst (look him up if you don't know who I mean) in this, maybe Peter Grimes (ditto) as well.

It certainly makes an entertaining and welcome change from the Rovers. There's a hint of Dead Calm about it, too, because there isn't even the tiniest breath of wind. But somehow the boom comes crashing across and knocks Joe into the freezing water. Oops, that wasn't mean to happen. And now the sprained wrist makes sense, because he can't climb back onto the boat. Get into the dinghy, man; I know it came adrift, but it's just there, look, then you can paddle back to Gail Force and climb on board. But, numbed by the cold and the booze, Joe's not thinking straight. He struggles a bit and cries out, while back on the boat his phone keeps ringing – Gail, and his daughter Tina, worried silly. Then, with the weight of the world pushing down on his shoulders, he sinks below the waves. Well, below the surface, because there aren't any waves.

Blimey. That wasn't meant to happen. While trying to fake his death, he's actually gone and killed himself. The canoe man only ended up in the nick; Joe's in Davy Flipping Jones's locker. Damn fool. I think that's what happened, anyway – death is one of the many uncertainties in soap. It's often ridiculous, and this is surely one of the silliest ever. Fun, though. And look on the bright side: Corrie loses a chump, and that bloody boat was beginning to get annoying, blocking up the set. Plus they'll probably find his body (don't they come back up after a while?), so Gail won't have to wait seven years before getting the life insurance money, and the loan shark – dur durm – can be paid off. Good job.

Kim Jong-Il's Comedy Club (BBC4) is a weird and wonderful thing. Three Danes – one film-maker and two comedians – are allowed into North Korea, supposedly to put on a theatre show, but really to make a film about trying to put on a theatre show. Obviously they are assigned a team of minders to make sure they only see what they're supposed to see, as well as a team of theatre directors, to ensure their performance is acceptable to the state. But, by giving them only what Kim Jong- Il wants, they inadvertently provide the Danes with what they want, too.

As Mads Brugger, the film-maker, says, in North Korea human beings are pixels on the enormous flatscreens of the regime: you either play ball with the Dear Leader or you don't play at all. So they play, but as they play they wink at the camera. (Not literally: that would almost certainly result in their immediate execution, but you know they are winking inside.)

It's a brave thing to do, to shake total- itarianism by the hand, then pull out at the last minute and cock a snook at it instead. But the result is terrific – both a telling portrait of what it's like to live in fear, and also a hilarious scam that Sacha Baron Cohen would be proud of. The highlight is when they manage to take part in one of those extraordinary, massive marches they go in for over there. One of the Danes is in a wheelchair (a rare sight in North Korea: there are no disabled people), and they shuffle along awkwardly between massive battalions of human obedience, three specks of grit in a well-oiled machine.